


Fair While the Mockingbird Sings

by the_ragnarok



Series: Across the Multiverse [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Future Fic, Kid Fic, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-07
Updated: 2013-03-07
Packaged: 2017-12-04 14:57:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/712009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ragnarok/pseuds/the_ragnarok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there are ghouls and Derek is kind of pathetic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChristyCorr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChristyCorr/gifts).



The spell lands Stiles near where the Hale house - is, in his reality; used to be, in this one. Stiles surveys the charred ruins, ambles by to the wolfsbane-covered plot. Only one subtly marked grave. Either Laura or Peter survived in this reality.

Only one way to find out which. Stiles closes his eyes, lets the inner hum of the spell guide him into town, leave him waiting outside a nondescript apartment.

“Stiles,” Derek says warily. He doesn’t look too bad, considering. Stiles takes in Derek’s bearing, the careful flexing on his fingers that spells alarmed werewolf to anyone with the eyes to see. Good. That will make the introduction easier. 

He steps close and tilts his head aside. “Take a sniff. Tell me who you smell.”

Derek hesitates for a moment, but then his nostrils flare. “Is this a joke?” His red bleeds into his eyes, which isn’t too unexpected. Doesn’t seem like there’s anyone else left to be Alpha.

“You know magic exists?” It’s a mostly rhetorical question, but Derek nods. “There’s a spell letting me switch places with copies of me from other universes. It’s activated when either them or you - the copies of you - are in trouble they can’t get out of by themselves.”

He expects Derek to bristle, but Derek just opens the door and gestures him inside. “Do you like Dr. Pepper?”

Stiles nods and sits down. Derek gets a bottle for him from the fridge, neglecting to take one himself. Seems like this version hates soda, too. 

From the set of Derek’s jaw, Stiles is expecting this to be bad. Multiple warring packs with magic-bearing humans and feuding hunters bad. But Derek just mumbles, “We thinks it’s ghouls.”

“Ghouls?” Stiles says, sagging a little in relief. “Ghouls is easy-peasy, man. We took down an entire—” he pauses. “What’s a word for a group of ghouls? A herd? A cannibalism? Anyway, we took down a whole buncha ghouls in my last year of highschool. It’s not hard, just tedious.”

“People are dying,” Derek grits out.

Stiles pats his shoulder consolingly. “I know. And when we’re done taking them down, I’ll go over with you on the basics of supernatural disaster prevention, I have a whole kit with me just for cases like this.” To Derek’s disbelieving glance Stiles adds, “Don’t worry, we’ve got this. We’ll have the ghouls crushed and your Stiles back in no time.”

A muscle twitches in Derek’s jaw. “Don’t call him that.”

“What, Stiles?” Stiles’ eyebrows rise in confusion.

“Mine,” Derek says and looks away.

~~

There’s sunlight on his face, and no alarm ringing. After the week Stiles had, he doesn’t question this, just digs himself deeper into the blankets and sighs happily.

Someone is sitting on the side of the bed, though, weighted down in silence. Stiles groans. “‘N a minute.”

“I have to go to work soon, and we need to talk,” someone says, and Stiles jumps because that is not Charlie.

“Derek,” he says faintly, “what are you doing here?” Then he takes a look around the room and frowns. “What am I doing here? And where is here? Is this about—”

Derek lifts a hand. “Get dressed. There’s coffee downstairs. If you want, there’s a synopsis here.” He gestures to a pile of paper on the bedside stand.

Stiles skims through them, reaching all the way to page three before tossing them down in disgust and marching out of the room still in his racecar pajamas. “Okay, real funny,” he says to Derek, who is pouring coffee as though nothing is wrong. “Who told you about the thing with the jelly donut?”

Derek makes a face. “Do I want to know?”

“You don’t,” says someone coming down the stairs and that’s—

Laura. As in, Laura Hale. The last time Stiles saw her— well, the last time he technically saw her, she was a corpse. The time before that Stiles was still in elementary school, and Laura was captain of the swim team.

Stiles always did have a good memory for faces. He gives her a weak wave. “So,” he says, mostly to himself. “Not my universe anymore.”

“Not so much, no.” Derek puts the coffee cup down. “You still take it black?”

~~

On a scale of  _bed of garbage and bricks_  to  _Hale house as Stiles knows it_ , Derek’s current residence isn’t too bad at first glance. It’s only when you take some time to appreciate it that you realize how deeply sad this place is. And even then, you’d need some privileged knowledge.

There are two stale boxes of Lucky Charms in the cabinets. Derek only likes eggs for breakfast. Derek’s desktop computer is lovingly built from a specification that Derek himself could not put together in a million years, but the browser is Explorer and heavily infested by toolbars. The apartment itself is sparkling clean and tidy to military precision levels, except for the handful of photocopied papers about folklore fallen behind the couch, by the nightstand, in the corner of the kitchen table; old and yellowing, resting on freshly-wiped surfaces like displaced holy relics.

“How long were you two together?” Stiles asks.

Derek glares, but doesn’t attempt to misunderstand. “It was never anything big,” Derek says. “He stayed over while we were tracking Peter down. Safer that way.”

Stiles nods slowly. “The Alpha pack never came?”

Derek shifts awkwardly in his seat. “They came. They went away.”

There’s an entire story there, probably, that Stiles isn’t touching with a ten-foot pole at the moment. “And y— this reality’s Stiles, he just…?”

“Packed up and left.” Derek shrugs. “He’s living with some guy named Charlie now. It’s better this way.”

_No, it really isn’t_ , Stiles thinks, but he’s not getting into this discussion with Derek right now. For once in the big, wide multiverse, Derek isn’t the one who needs sense smacked into his dense head. 

Instead Stiles gets a notebook to scribble on. “So, when did the ghoul attack start?”


	2. Chapter 2

After coffee, Derek leaves for work. Leaving Stiles at the tender mercies of the rest of the Hale family, or the lack thereof.

"Hold," Laura commands, plopping a baby into Stiles' automatically stretcheted arms.

"You can't just throw babies at people like that," Stiles complains, unthinkingly adjusting his grip. The baby is about six months old, to Stiles' less than expert eye, and she gurgles happily (and wetly) into Stiles' neck. "I might've dropped her."

"Nah." Laura sits down next to him, cross-legged. "Besides, Lily's a werewolf. At worst she'll bounce."

Stiles glares at her over Lily's downy head. "One word: _trauma._ "

Laura shrugs one shoulder. "Most guys manage to recover from circumcision fine."

"Actually I have a theory about that--"

Laura raises a hand, eerily like Derek. "Spare me."

The silence is broken only by Lily belching. Stiles grimaces and pats her back. "She yours?"

"My what?" Laura lets Stiles squirm for a moment before she says, "Yours, actually. Yours and Derek's."

Lily shrieks in protest when Stiles' hands go limp with sudden shock. He secures his hold and whispers soothing nonesense until the grumpiness resides. Just like her dad, Stiles thinks, shocky. "How the hell did we get a baby?"

"I guess you can say technically she's mine," Laura says as if conceding a point. "I had twins, so you got the spare. Don't look so shocked," she says, as though Stiles has a choice in the matter. "It all stays in the pack. Rose and her are raised like sisters anyway, and the Stilinskis are happy to get a granddaughter. Everyone wins."

"Stilinskis," Stiles repeats slowly, emphasising the plural. 

He'd never actually seen a werewolf pull the sudden disappearance move while he was looking at them. It's extremely disconcerting. 

With a sigh, Stiles jiggles Lily and leafs through the papers Derek left for him. Right now, he's less enthused than apprehensive about a wonderful new reality to explore, but he's got a hunch that staying ignorant would be worse.

~~

The trick to dealing with ghouls is about three-fourths brute strength to one fourth magic. The strength thing, Derek has got down - even packless, he's powerful. He's harder than the Derek Stiles knows, a hungry-lean look to him that just cries out for some Papa Hale-style pancakes.

Making the pancakes, Stiles knows from bitter experience, will end up causing more angst than it heals. So he goes for the next best thing. "I require curly fries," Stiles says, flopping dramatically on Derek's couch. Derek's expression just turns stonier, so Stiles says, "C'mon, we've nearly got the plan operational, the ghouls won't attack until sundown and I haven't eaten in way too long." He debates actually sticking his bottom lip out, and sorrowfully decides against it.

"I haven't figured any of the herb stuff," Derek says.

"That?" Stiles waves it off. "I've got it. I'll leave you a copy of the instruction for this reality's Stiles, he can do it next time."

That gets Derek to freeze still. Scary still; dead still. "What makes you think," Derek says, deceptively soft, "that this reality Stiles will be interested in helping?"

Stiles rolls his eyes. "Uh, I've met me?"

"You're not him," Derek says sharply.

"Never claimed to be." Stiles leans up on one elbow. "But seriously, trust me on this. He will."

Derek crosses his arms and looks unmovable.

Stiles rolls his eyes. "Okay, if you want to get technical-- the spell that got me here has some constants. The things that define us, me and my Derek." He doesn't miss this Derek's flinch at the word mine, but Stiles can hardly take it back. "My dad's always in some kind of community protecting job, Scott is always my best friend, and I always stick my nose where it doesn't belong. Especially if it's dangerous. That's what makes me me." 

That, and he's always in love with Derek. Stiles feels guilty about that part, sometimes, like he abandoned all the versions of him that didn't care for Derek Hale. But the spell had to rely on the most solid foundations he could find in himself, and Stiles has been in love in Derek since he was ten. Those hypothetical other-Stileses who don't want Derek - Stiles doesn't feel like he even knows them, or entirely wants to.

"Not if it means having anything to do with me," Derek says, the stubborn wolf-ass.

Stiles slings a hand over Derek's neck. "It'll be fine. M-- other-you will talk to him. Now let's get some fries before I shrivel and die here on your couch."

~~

Noon comes and goes. The Hale house isn't empty - never is, Stiles gathers from his other self's notes - but there are only a handful of adults and they're all giving Stiles a pretty wide berth. 

"It's weird," Stiles admits when Derek finally comes back from work. "First everyone throws themselves at me - or throws babies, what the fuck, who does that - and now it's like I'm a leper."

Derek rubs the back of his neck, looking at Stiles from under his eyelashes. 

Stiles swallows. He's got-- reactions to Derek, okay, some unresolved shit from the time when they were cooped up together, constantly right there in each other's faces, in each other's lives. 

Also, Derek is too goddamned pretty for anyone's good.

"It's weird for them, too," Derek says finally. "They're not used to, uh."

"Me not being attached at the hip to my local version of you?" Stiles did read the papers other-Stiles left him. Some parts he underlined.

Derek sits down, puts a hand on Stiles' shoulder and earnestly says, "Nobody means to pressure you."

"I'm sure they don't," Stiles sighs, and curls into Derek's touch before Derek can realize what a huge hypocrite he's being.

And then there's just-- quiet. Derek doesn't ask any questions, content to rest on the couch and stare at the ceiling while Stiles curled up in his grasp like a needy kitten.

"Charlie hugs me," Stiles says into the silence. "He hugs me lots."

Derek hums assent.

"He wants to touch me, he's very good about letting me know that. Without pressuring me." Stiles closes his eyes and lets his head drop onto Derek's shoulder. "Derek would just, sometimes he'd pounce without warning. And other times he'd glare at me if I even came near him, and I couldn't tell what the hell he wanted most of the time. The whole thing was way about my pay-grade."

"I don't blame you for leaving," Derek says.

Disgusted, Stiles pulls away, punching Derek's shoulder. "See? That's what I'm talking about. Fucking dumb martyr shit, how does your Stiles put up with it?"

Derek huffs. "Your Derek was an ass, you left him. It seems like a good choice, and doesn't really affect me in any way whatsoever."

Stiles darts a look at him, but Derek seems honestly unconcerned. Mellow. Who thought Derek Hale could do mellow? "Way to be unfeeling toward your fellow Dereks." 

Derek rolls his eyes and gently cuffs Stiles. Stiles retaliates, when Laura comes down the stairs she finds them rolling on the living room floor with Stiles' teeth in Derek's forearm and Derek's palm splayed across Stiles' stomach, fingertips digging in until Stiles is giggling hysterically.

"Ugh." She separates them quickly and efficiently. "Derek, your kid pooped herself, go change her before she starts crying."

~~

It's not teasing, Stiles tells himself as he bends over the maps, exposing a bit more of his neck than strictly necessary. It's _acclimatizing_. 

Eventually, this reality's Stiles will come back, and Stiles would be shirking his responsibility to the happiness of Stileses across the multiverse if he didn't teach this Derek that it was okay to show Stiles affection, honestly, he doesn't bite.

Well, okay, but should someone like Derek really be concerned about a tiny amount of biting? Honestly.

He feels Derek's breath hot on his nape. If Stiles were of the wolfy persuasion, he's pretty sure he'd've heard Derek's heart thumping like a cartoon bunny.

Then there are lips on Stiles' skin, gentle and hesitant, and Stiles gives in to his own instinct. He turns around and wraps Derek in a hug, so sudden and fierce that both of them tumble down on the couch. Stiles gets the breath knocked out of him, but he also gets a lap full of warm Derek, which is always a good thing.

His enjoyment is interrupted by the curiously distinctive sound of claws ripping through cloth. Stiles sighs. They were making such good progress.

"You're not him," Derek says, low and intense. His hand - thankfully claw-free again - curls around Stiles' waist, holding him fast. 

"No," Stiles agrees easily. "I'm me." He deliberately relaxes in Derek's hold, taking deep even breaths and loosening his muscles. 

Derek makes a pained sound and buries his face in Stiles' neck. Stiles holds and holds him.


End file.
